Procurement Lead, EMI - HDM

The Procurement Lead, Innovation Procurement leads innovation procurement execution across a business unit by overseeing a team of Innovation Managers and enabling strong delivery of the innovation strategy across brands and platforms. Reporting to the Associate Director, External Manufacturing & Innovation Procurement, this role focuses on building team capability, championing supplier-enabled innovation, strengthening innovation ways of working, and ensuring sourcing and commercialization excellence across the portfolio both mid and long term.

This role serves as the leadership bridge between the Associate Director and the Innovation Managers and supports complex innovation projects where appropriate. The Group Lead is accountable for enabling team execution, removing barriers, coaching through complex issues, and building the operating rhythm that helps innovation procurement deliver with speed, rigor, and consistency. The role is focused on team leadership, portfolio visibility, governance, capability building, and continuous improvement.

• Lead and develop a team of Innovation Managers responsible for sourcing and commercialization support across the business unit innovation portfolio mid and long term
• Translate business unit and brand innovation priorities into clear team focus, resource alignment, and execution direction
• Champion supplier-enabled innovation across the business unit and brands by helping the team identify, elevate, and connect supplier capabilities to the 3year innovation needs
• Build the operating rhythm for innovation procurement across the portfolio, including prioritization, governance, issue escalation, and progress visibility
• Coach Innovation Managers through complex sourcing, commercialization, and supplier challenges to strengthen decision making, problem solving, and execution quality
• Remove barriers that slow innovation delivery by driving alignment across procurement, R&D, operations, finance, quality, legal, and business teams
• Instill sourcing excellence across the team through strong standards in supplier selection, negotiation, contracting, commercialization readiness, and launch support
• Drive consistency in how the team manages innovation sourcing activities, supplier engagement, transitions, and cross-functional coordination
• Lead continuous improvement in innovation procurement ways of working to simplify processes, reduce rework, and improve speed, visibility, and execution effectiveness
• Support portfolio-level prioritization and tradeoff discussions by surfacing risks, dependencies, capacity constraints, and execution challenges
• Strengthen team capability in structured problem solving, risk sensing, scenario planning, and proactive stakeholder management
• Partner with the Associate Director and core category procurement leaders to ensure alignment between innovation activity and broader business, supplier, and category strategies
• Identify key areas for efficiencies post launch and set the base procurement teams up for success for the future
• Ensure effective transition of launched innovation at external manufacturers from innovation procurement support into base business ownership after stabilization
• Monitor portfolio health through key indicators related to sourcing progress, commercialization readiness, supplier readiness, timing, and execution risk
• Foster a team culture of accountability, collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain, business, finance, operations, engineering, or a related field; MBA and/or advanced procurement qualifications preferred
• Significant procurement experience, ideally including innovation sourcing, external manufacturing, commercialization, ingredients, packaging, CAPEX, or related categories
• Demonstrated people leadership experience, including coaching and developing high-performing teams
• Strong experience supporting innovation, commercialization, supplier capability development, and launch execution in a fast-moving environment
• Strong systems thinking, with the ability to connect innovation strategy, supplier capability, commercialization requirements, and cross-functional dependencies across the portfolio
• Strong sourcing and supplier management foundation, with credibility to coach others on negotiation, contracting, commercialization readiness, and supplier execution
• Curiosity about AI and digital tools, with interest in how they can…